Intel 670p SSD Pricing Slashed Just Two Days After Official Announcement

[Uskompuf]

Intel announced their 'mainstream' 670p PCIe 3.0 QLC SSD family earlier this week with pricing more in line with what you would expect for PCIe 4.0 drives. Intel announced three 670p models with 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities, the advertised speeds varied with sequential reads of 3500 MB/s on the 1/2 TB models and 3000 MB/s for the 512 GB variant. Sequential write speeds were quoted as 1600 MB/s for the 512 GB, 2500 MB/s for the 1 TB, and 2700 MB/s for the 2 TB model. The latest QLC memory also brought a write endurance increase of 23% and the SSD's all came with a five-year warranty.

While these drives all offered respectable performance their pricing did not reflect their 'mainstream' target market with the drives priced at 90 USD, 155 USD, and 330 USD for the 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB models respectively. It would appear that retailers are taking it upon themselves to correct this by reducing prices by up to 24% on the new drives. Newegg currently has the drives listed for 69.99 USD, 129.99 USD, and 249.99 USD which represents a price drop of 20 USD for the 512 GB, 25 USD for the 1 TB, and 80 USD for the 2 TB version. These new prices make the 670p series a much more viable PCIe 3.0 SSD however, it is yet to be seen if these are the new official prices or just a discount from an individual retailer.



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[newtekie1]

Still overpriced. The 512GB version is not worth buying at any price(get a TLC drive at that storage size). The 1TB version needs to be under $95, the 2TB version needs to be under $185.

 

[Chaitanya]

And it is still overpriced for what is a QLC drive with WD SN550 available for those prices(barring discounts).

 

[newtekie1]

And it is still overpriced for what is a QLC drive with WD SN550 available for those prices(barring discounts).

Hell, the SX8200 Pro is available for cheaper than the new 670p prices. There is no point in getting one of these QLC drives at those prices.

 

[trparky]

Still overpriced. The 512GB version is not worth buying at any price(get a TLC drive at that storage size). The 1TB version needs to be under $95, the 2TB version needs to be under $185.

I agree. Too little, too late.

 

[dragontamer5788]

Still overpriced. The 512GB version is not worth buying at any price(get a TLC drive at that storage size). The 1TB version needs to be under $95, the 2TB version needs to be under $185.

Those are approximately the prices I'd choose as fair as well.

512GB is not worth buying because of TBW worries at the moment, as well as a lack of cache (less room for SLC cache to do its thing). You don't want to fill these SSDs to the brim: you need to leave lots of room for those caches + TRIM + wear-leveling.

 

[R0H1T]

512GB is not worth buying because of TBW worries at the moment

The bigger issue is Intel drives lock up after their TBW is exhausted, go into read only mode IIRC.

Intel 600p Series SSD Review

If you can't beat them, undercut them on price. Intel plans to do just that with the first TLC-based NVMe M.2 SSD to hit the market. The new 600p Series ships in three low-cost capacities, and a 1TB drive will join them, but endurance is a sticking point.

www.tomshardware.com

Now I don't recall if this is the case on all their drives but is a "feature" they've employed in the recent past.

 

[newtekie1]

The bigger issue is Intel drives lock up after their TBW is exhausted, go into read only mode IIRC.

Intel 600p Series SSD Review

If you can't beat them, undercut them on price. Intel plans to do just that with the first TLC-based NVMe M.2 SSD to hit the market. The new 600p Series ships in three low-cost capacities, and a 1TB drive will join them, but endurance is a sticking point.

www.tomshardware.com

Now I don't recall if this is the case on all their drives but is a "feature" they've employed in the recent past.

Did you actually read the article? Intel drives don't lock up after their TBW is exhausted, they go into Read-only once the spare cells are all used up. The drive can then be installed as a secondary drive and the data copied off of it. It says this right in the article.

This is pretty common on SSDs.

 

[R0H1T]

Intel drives don't lock up after their TBW is exhausted, they go into Read-only once the spare cells are all used up.

Did you read that article? What good is read only mode btw? And no they go into read only mode when TBW is exceeded - not necessarily when all the spare cells are used up! There's a difference & yeah I'll edit the specific reference to lock up.

 

[Tomorrow]

Still too expensive for bottom of the barrel QLC. I just bought a 512GB Samsung PM9A1 (OEM version of 980 Pro) for 90€: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/samsung-980-pro-1-tb-ssd.278477/#post-4467654

And if the 2TB version of PM9A1 would be available it would cost roughly the same as the 2TB 670p costs right now.

Intel is delusional if they think i will pay 70€ for the same capacity QLC with less than half the speed and endurance.
In order for 670p to be worth it it should cost as follows (or less):
500GB: <49€
1TB: <99€
2TB: <199€

 

[BSim500]

$130 for a 1TB QLC. LOL, so that'll end up about £130 in the UK then? I think I'll keep my 2TB MX500 I got for £155 until it dies of old age.

 

[1d10t]

Considering Samsung 1080p only cost as low as $90, Intel is asking too much for such low res 670p.


/s

 

[Prima.Vera]

still way to overpriced... Intel fail as always with their prices.

 

[kapone32]

Intel seems to think that SSds are like GPUs and PSUs and command some type of premium. If they wanted these to be successful they should have doubled the capacity and kept pricing the same.

 

[newtekie1]

Did you read that article? What good is read only mode btw? And no they go into read only mode when TBW is exceeded - not necessarily when all the spare cells are used up! There's a difference & yeah I'll edit the specific reference to lock up.

Direct from the article YOU posted:

EDIT: 9/23/2016 Intel clarified the nature of the read-only feature, which is not based upon the endurance limit. All SSDs have spare area that is dedicated to replacing failed cells. The Intel 600p only switches into a read-only mode when the spare area is exhausted. Intel also noted users can copy the data from a read-only SSD by installing it as a secondary drive in another computer.

So, again, I ask, did you even read the article?

Again, this is a common feature in SSDs to allow the data to be moved to a new drive when the drive can no longer reliably write data. Stop spreading bullshit.

 

[Franzen4Real]

I bought a 1TB 660P for $82 a couple of years ago, I agree that the price of this series has become quite unattractive this gen (even after the price cut). I know a lot have expressed their dislike for the cheap QLC drives in the past couple of articles here, but I think they are great game library drives (especially if a small form factor is something you value). Mine has been used exclusively as a Steam/Battlenet/EGS drive for nearly 2 years and I have no complaints with the performance at all. However the correct $/GB and use case must be there to make them a nice option to consider, and I think they have missed by a lot considering the vast amount of competition in the space.

 

[Tomorrow]

I bought a 1TB 660P for $82 a couple of years ago, I agree that the price of this series has become quite unattractive this gen (even after the price cut). I know a lot have expressed their dislike for the cheap QLC drives in the past couple of articles here, but I think they are great game library drives (especially if a small form factor is something you value). Mine has been used exclusively as a Steam/Battlenet/EGS drive for nearly 2 years and I have no complaints with the performance at all. However the correct $/GB and use case must be there to make them a nice option to consider, and I think they have missed by a lot considering the vast amount of competition in the space.

How many writes has your 660p accumulated over those 2 years? Just curious.

 

[Franzen4Real]

How many writes has your 660p accumulated over those 2 years? Just curious.

just over 5.2TB written, with 12964 hours of up time.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Will only buy QLC if it's 5c/GB or less. So $200 for a 4TB QLC as a games or photos drive would be ok. That doesn't look like it'll happen in the next 5 years even and god knows we'll probably be looking at PLC by then.

 

[watzupken]

Intel can price whatever they want, but they will just end up with very little sale in the retail space. Most of these if I am not mistaken, gets pumped to the OEMs because I have seen Intel QLC drives in a couple of laptops.